Sam Jett
Sam Jett has been named executive chef at Audrey, the East Nashville Appalachian restaurant founded by chef Sean Brock in 2021. Jett, like Brock, has family roots in Appalachia, and after years running operations at Audrey, Jett tells the Scene he’s excited to return to the kitchen.
“It’s been really great to dive back into the kitchen these last two months,” says Jett, who has worked with Brock for years, first as part of the opening team at Husk Nashville. He also worked at Death & Taxes in Raleigh, N.C., before returning to work with Brock again, helping design, open and run Audrey.
“Sean is really incredibly gifted in refinement,” Jett says of the differences between the two chefs, “whereas I tend to chase soul a lot more.”
To Jett, that means homing in on the qualities of resilience and resourcefulness that have been and still are part of the Appalachian experience. He’s focused on the connection to the land and the ideology of the food he’s serving at Audrey. Vegetables may have an uneven cut, and burnt ends are part of the recipe.
Jett doesn’t want to import ingredients for the Audrey kitchen, opting for example for a local cold-pressed canola oil rather than an imported olive oil. He’s leaning on Nashville-area farms for most ingredients, with exceptions for ingredients from the mountains of Appalachia that can’t be grown in Middle Tennessee.
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“I’m not going to buy ramps from Michigan or Washington,” he says. “That’s not the same soil. It’s not the same taste. I may be taking it a bit too far, but I think there is something about this, like the terroir mindset that Europe has.”
As first reported in the Scene in April, the change in executive chef comes as Brock is no longer an owner of Audrey, the restaurant named after his grandmother. Paul Mishkin, once co-owner of Audrey with Brock (and an investor in Brock’s now-shuttered The Continental), is now the sole owner of Audrey’s “property, its asset and brand,” he told the Scene in an email. Mishkin also owns Southall Farm and Inn, the luxury resort in Franklin. The Southall team now handles operations for Audrey. Joining Jett at Audrey will be Hannah LaFary, who was named general manager.
Brock told the Scene that the experience of Audrey for diners will be consistent in that it is based on his vision and his culinary philosophy. It’s still Brock’s books that line the library and his personal art collection on the walls, Brock says. He will still be available for private dinners upstairs in the space that once housed June, the tasting restaurant named after his other grandmother, which closed in 2024.
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Brock will be focusing his time on Sho Pizza Bar, which opened in Inglewood in April, and Joyland, his crustburger and chicken-on-a-stick chain. Joyland currently has four locations, including one in Birmingham, Ala., and one in Charleston, S.C. Sho Pizza Bar inventor Ben Gambill sees the possibility for additional Sho Pizza Bar outlets.
“A lot of the reason why I wanted to move back into the kitchen is to make sure that that connection to Sean is always honored,” Jett says. “I want to preserve that. I treat this place like it is my grandmother’s name on the door.”
